Jacob Lawrence was a serious professional artist by the time he was 20. He was the first African-American whose paintings were shown in a major New York commercial gallery. His paintings were the first by an African-American artist in the collection of New York”s Museum of Modern Art.

His vast, 60-painting series on the migration of African-Americans from south to north early in the 20th century brought him fame, and 26 panels were published in Fortune magazine in 1940. He was 23.

So why isn”t Lawrence better known, even by frequent visitors to museums and galleries?

“I think Jacob Lawrence is one of the most undervalued artists, considering his impact,” said Connie Wolf, director of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.

That”s about to change, thanks to the generosity of the late Dr. Herbert J. Kayden of New York City and his daughter, Joelle Kayden, a Stanford alumna.

Kayden and his late wife, Dr. Gabrielle H. Reem, were longtime collectors of Lawrence”s work. Now 16 of his paintings and drawings, 39 prints and an illustrated book have been donated to the Cantor. Going on display Wednesday, they rank as one of the largest collections of Lawrence”s works in any museum.

“This exhibit is going to be a real revelation for the whole Bay Area,” Wolf said.

There are a number of reasons Lawrence is not a “name brand” beyond the world of artists, Wolf suggested. He wasn”t a self-promoter, and he didn”t fit any stereotype of the African-American artist. His work doesn”t fit into any neat category, and his subject matter was challenging.

But his powerful messages and skill as a storyteller, as well as the compelling color and composition of his work, deserve to be seen as they rarely have been in the Bay Area, she said.

Previous exhibits of Lawrence”s work “have been so scant, it”s almost embarrassing,” Wolf said. Now the Kayden family gift offers a chance to see “the breadth of his work.” Some hasn”t been shown since the original exhibitions.

The Kayden family collection spans the 1940s through the 1990s, nearly Lawrence”s entire career.

Subjects include Harlem street scenes and social life (“At Times It Is Hard to Get a Table in a Pool Room,” 1943); the abolitionist John Brown (1978 silkscreen prints based on 1941 paintings); the Underground Railroad heroine Harriet Tubman (“The Last Journey,” 1967); construction workers and black families (a poster design for a Whitney Museum retrospective, 1974); and school integration (“Ordeal of Alice,” 1963, which curator Elizabeth Kathleen Mitchell considers the most important work in the collection).

Mitchell noted that Lawrence matured in the 1940s just as abstract expressionism was taking off in the art world. “He wasn”t working in that vein — he was a dedicated figurist,” she said. “He never changed his art to accommodate the market.”

Later in life, Lawrence turned to teaching, partly to avoid altering “the content of his work,” Mitchell said. From September 1969 to March 1970, he was a visiting artist at what was then California State College at Hayward, now Cal State East Bay. He had been invited by painter Raymond Saunders.

Eventually, in 1971, Lawrence and his wife, Gwendolyn Knight, moved permanently to Seattle, where he accepted a full professorship at the University of Washington. He continued to paint.

Lawrence”s style, apparent in his youth, was distinctive throughout his long career.

He studied African-American history and art history on his own. As a teenager, he walked the 50-odd blocks from Harlem to New York”s Metropolitan Museum of Art, as art historian Nancy Frazier points out. He went straight to the galleries of Italian Renaissance paintings.

Later, he was influenced by Mexican muralist Jos Orozco, whom he met at the Museum of Modern Art, and painter Josef Albers, with whom he studied after World War II.

There may be simplified, abstract elements in Lawrence”s paintings, but the specifics of African-American life, and particularly Harlem, grounded his work. “I remember folks in the street in Harlem tell ing the stories of John Brown and Harriet Tubman in such a passionate way,” Lawrence once said.

The Kayden collection includes an illustration from Lawrence”s “Harriet and the Promised Land,” a 1968 children”s book about Tubman, and the 22-panel silkscreen series chronicling the life of John Brown.

What isn”t included in the exhibit is Lawrence”s most famous series, the 60 panels now known as “The Migration Series,” completed in 1941. Coincidentally, it goes on display April 3 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Born in Atlantic City in 1917, Lawrence and his mother settled in Harlem in 1930.

“He arrived right at the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance, just as it was getting its footing,” explained Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins, a curator associated with the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, who once met Lawrence.

“There are two things that are very important to remember about Jake,” LeFalle-Collins said. “One, his really dynamic sense of design and his being unafraid to use bright colors. Two, he was a storyteller. At that time, African-American history was not in the history books. To tell that history, many artists did it through pictures.”

If Lawrence is not a “name brand” to the general public, he is certainly a presence in African-American collections and museums. “I don”t know — perhaps there is a rediscovery of Jake,” said LeFalle-Collins, “but we have always known he was there.”

Mitchell, the Cantor curator, said Lawrence “created a model for how to examine American history, to deal with the black experience. It”s very easy to lose track of the fact that in the ”40s, ”50s and ”60s, he depicted African-American life with dignity and respect. That was a political act.”

Shortly before he died in 2000, Lawrence wrote to a television producer who planned to use “The Migration Series” in a production. In re-examining his paintings based on events nearly a century earlier, Lawrence suggested that they told an “even larger, universal story.”

He said, “My wish is also that you will bring to the production a sense of the vital, strong and pulsating beat that has always been humanity. In this way, you will tell the story I”ve articulated through my paintings and make it yours.”

Jacob Lawrence was a serious professional artist by the time he was 20. He was the first African-American whose paintings were shown in a major New York commercial gallery. His paintings were the first by an African-American artist in the collection of New York”s Museum of Modern Art.

His vast, 60-painting series on the migration of African-Americans from south to north early in the 20th century brought him fame, and 26 panels were published in Fortune magazine in 1940. He was 23.

So why isn”t Lawrence better known, even by frequent visitors to museums and galleries?

“I think Jacob Lawrence is one of the most undervalued artists, considering his impact,” said Connie Wolf, director of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.

That”s about to change, thanks to the generosity of the late Dr. Herbert J. Kayden of New York City and his daughter, Joelle Kayden, a Stanford alumna.

Kayden and his late wife, Dr. Gabrielle H. Reem, were longtime collectors of Lawrence”s work. Now 16 of his paintings and drawings, 39 prints and an illustrated book have been donated to the Cantor. Going on display Wednesday, they rank as one of the largest collections of Lawrence”s works in any museum.

“This exhibit is going to be a real revelation for the whole Bay Area,” Wolf said.

There are a number of reasons Lawrence is not a “name brand” beyond the world of artists, Wolf suggested. He wasn”t a self-promoter, and he didn”t fit any stereotype of the African-American artist. His work doesn”t fit into any neat category, and his subject matter was challenging.

But his powerful messages and skill as a storyteller, as well as the compelling color and composition of his work, deserve to be seen as they rarely have been in the Bay Area, she said.

Previous exhibits of Lawrence”s work “have been so scant, it”s almost embarrassing,” Wolf said. Now the Kayden family gift offers a chance to see “the breadth of his work.” Some hasn”t been shown since the original exhibitions.

The Kayden family collection spans the 1940s through the 1990s, nearly Lawrence”s entire career.

Subjects include Harlem street scenes and social life (“At Times It Is Hard to Get a Table in a Pool Room,” 1943); the abolitionist John Brown (1978 silkscreen prints based on 1941 paintings); the Underground Railroad heroine Harriet Tubman (“The Last Journey,” 1967); construction workers and black families (a poster design for a Whitney Museum retrospective, 1974); and school integration (“Ordeal of Alice,” 1963, which curator Elizabeth Kathleen Mitchell considers the most important work in the collection).

Mitchell noted that Lawrence matured in the 1940s just as abstract expressionism was taking off in the art world. “He wasn”t working in that vein — he was a dedicated figurist,” she said. “He never changed his art to accommodate the market.”

Later in life, Lawrence turned to teaching, partly to avoid altering “the content of his work,” Mitchell said. From September 1969 to March 1970, he was a visiting artist at what was then California State College at Hayward, now Cal State East Bay. He had been invited by painter Raymond Saunders.

Eventually, in 1971, Lawrence and his wife, Gwendolyn Knight, moved permanently to Seattle, where he accepted a full professorship at the University of Washington. He continued to paint.

Lawrence”s style, apparent in his youth, was distinctive throughout his long career.

He studied African-American history and art history on his own. As a teenager, he walked the 50-odd blocks from Harlem to New York”s Metropolitan Museum of Art, as art historian Nancy Frazier points out. He went straight to the galleries of Italian Renaissance paintings.

Later, he was influenced by Mexican muralist Jos Orozco, whom he met at the Museum of Modern Art, and painter Josef Albers, with whom he studied after World War II.

There may be simplified, abstract elements in Lawrence”s paintings, but the specifics of African-American life, and particularly Harlem, grounded his work. “I remember folks in the street in Harlem tell ing the stories of John Brown and Harriet Tubman in such a passionate way,” Lawrence once said.

The Kayden collection includes an illustration from Lawrence”s “Harriet and the Promised Land,” a 1968 children”s book about Tubman, and the 22-panel silkscreen series chronicling the life of John Brown.

What isn”t included in the exhibit is Lawrence”s most famous series, the 60 panels now known as “The Migration Series,” completed in 1941. Coincidentally, it goes on display April 3 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Born in Atlantic City in 1917, Lawrence and his mother settled in Harlem in 1930.

“He arrived right at the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance, just as it was getting its footing,” explained Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins, a curator associated with the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, who once met Lawrence.

“There are two things that are very important to remember about Jake,” LeFalle-Collins said. “One, his really dynamic sense of design and his being unafraid to use bright colors. Two, he was a storyteller. At that time, African-American history was not in the history books. To tell that history, many artists did it through pictures.”

If Lawrence is not a “name brand” to the general public, he is certainly a presence in African-American collections and museums. “I don”t know — perhaps there is a rediscovery of Jake,” said LeFalle-Collins, “but we have always known he was there.”

Mitchell, the Cantor curator, said Lawrence “created a model for how to examine American history, to deal with the black experience. It”s very easy to lose track of the fact that in the ”40s, ”50s and ”60s, he depicted African-American life with dignity and respect. That was a political act.”

Shortly before he died in 2000, Lawrence wrote to a television producer who planned to use “The Migration Series” in a production. In re-examining his paintings based on events nearly a century earlier, Lawrence suggested that they told an “even larger, universal story.”

He said, “My wish is also that you will bring to the production a sense of the vital, strong and pulsating beat that has always been humanity. In this way, you will tell the story I”ve articulated through my paintings and make it yours.”